‘Absolutely,’ I say, trying to hold back my excitement as I step into the room. I could spend an entire week in here, wallowing in all the beauty. I wander slowly towards the rails, running my hands gently across butter-smooth silks, liquid-cool satins, and encrustations of sequins. As I walk, I make a mental note never to introduce Nelly to my brother. He would never pass the hand test.
‘Okay,’ Marco says from behind me, still loitering in the door. ‘I’ll give you twenty minutes.’
I glance around. He’s looking at his Rolex as though it’s one of those cheap stopwatch things gym teachers used to have, and it’s already counting down. The man has so little patience.
Nelly folds his green velvet arms across his large body. ‘Certainly not. For that…’ From a safe distance, he sweeps one arm over the length of my body. ‘…I’m not taking anything less than an hour.’
They’re talking over my head, but seriously, I don’t care. I’m with Nelly on this. Whatever he’s offering, I’m going to take it.
‘It’s just a dress.’ Unsurprisingly, Marco is sounding a tad like a grumpy toddler. I get the feeling he does that a lot.
Nelly crosses himself as though warding off a demonic spirit. ‘Ugh, ugh. Don’t you ever say that again. This,’ he raises both hands around him as if summoning an orchestra, ‘is a temple of fashion.’
Irritated, Marco clears his throat. ‘Nelly mate, you’ve just got to zip her in.’
Despite my off-the-rack high-street fashion training, even I can see this is simply not the case. We’re in couture country.
Nelly shoots Marco an irritated look. ‘Even if that did accurately describe the process, which,’ he sighs, ‘it absolutely does not. What about the hair? The make-up?’
Nelly’s got a point. I like to think I’m a bit of a whiz with the heated tongs, but what with the electricity cut and the lack of hot water, I hadn’t had time to give myself a blow dry. I had thought the face was okay, though. I’d used my brother’s arc lights in the garage so I could plaster something on. Maybe I went too far? Possibly plaster is just what I should have been avoiding.
‘One hour.’ Nelly’s eyebrows pull into a perfect warning arch. ‘Last offer, Marco. You can take my keys.’ He slips his fingers around his waistband and pulls out a bundle of keys. ‘Only no drinking, no speeding, and absolutely definitely no dogs.’
‘Dogs?’ Marco looks puzzled.
‘House rules. The hairs get on the dresses.’ Nelly shivers.
‘Okay,’ Marco says, shifting his weight and moving towards the door. That grumpy child attitude still hanging over his shoulders.
Nelly and I watch as he slumps through the hole in the wall that the sliding door has left.
Nelly puts his finger over his lips. His eyes darting mischievously as we listen to Marco retrace his steps down the corridor.
‘Thank goodness.’ Nelly breathes an exaggerated sigh of relief. ‘I swear that man is half-ogre.’
I laugh. Trying to dismiss that awkward moment when I’d met Marco at reception and he’d matched my goblin perfectly with his more default ogre impression.
‘Good.’ Nelly nods in a smug, satisfied manner. ‘This girl likes my humour. I can work with that. I think peacock-blue silk, a modern-faux Morris print. Maybe that trouser suit I finished last month. Nobody’s seen it yet, and it’s such a beauty.’
He slides his hands over my hips and waist. The gesture is totally unsexual. I can tell that for Nelly, I’m simply a mannequin. ‘Yes,’ he says, standing back, pleased with himself. ‘Size twelve. That’ll fit.’
MARCO
I drive away from Nelly’s warehouse in his low-slung, banana-yellow Corvette Stingray. It’s the Stingray that’s growling, not me. Not yet anyway. Though the way I’m feeling, the car’s tone matches my mood. I feel like an explosion in a bottle. That might come soon. Tonight was supposed to be simple – me and the new girl checking out some jazz joints. Uncharacteristically for me, I was even kind of looking forward to it. There’s something about her, something that I can’t quite put my finger on. She’s different from the others, got a good head on her shoulders. She smiles most of the time, even when everything around her is crumbling. You get the feeling she can deal with it, pull it all around. But the dress? The outfit? The hair? Where the hell did she think we were going? It seems like nothing ever goes right in my life. Nothing’s ever simple. Sitting behind the wheel of Nelly’s overly flashy power car, a large part of me wants to just keep on driving – point the banana on wheels towards the motorway and keep heading away from the city till the fuel tank runs dry. Sometimes life, the responsibility of the company, the wrangling to make things work, it’s all too much. Maybe Nelly should have added a few more things to that do not list of his. Running the tank dry is never a good idea, and the car, despite being ridiculous, is Nelly’s pride and joy. The car doesn’t just growl; it screams look at me now, go on, people, look at me now. That’s Nelly all over. He’s a guy that likes the limelight.
I can’t remember a time when he wasn’t in my life. I’d be the first to admit that we’ve got an unlikely friendship. Nelly is camp and funny and flamboyant, and me, well I’m certainly none of that. If people are being kind, they might describe me as reserved. If they’re being honest, they would describe me more accurately as grumpy, taciturn, permanently irritated. I should have been in with the in-crowd at school. I was the natural fit – my dad had the dosh and the flashy image. Not playing sports is always a problem, but with my connections, that shouldn’t have been insurmountable. The in-crowd like sport. I, however, liked my guitar. But still, that shouldn’t have been a deal breaker. Only, the in-crowd is all about self-assurance. They’re winners. They believe in themselves. Me, on the other hand, I didn’t like who I was. My father may have been a big man, someone people looked up to, someone they followed in the papers, in all the it-crowd magazines, but I knew the truth. The guy was an arsehole. I wasn’t playing his game. I didn’t want to talk about him or my life outside of school, so I just stayed in my room at the ludicrously expensive boarding school I’d been exiled to, strumming my guitar, writing depressing songs, and dreaming of living in a trailer in the backwoods of America. No doubt there’s someone in the backwoods of America dreaming of my life. That’s the irony. You very rarely get the life that suits you.
It’s unlikely I would have ended up being Nelly’s friend if the school hadn’t forced him on me. We shared a room in year seven. He was ostracised; I was ostracising myself. Initially, I didn’t think it would work, but somehow, from the way the guy looked at life with the wonder of a newborn chick, finding marvels in the patterns it throws at a person, it did work. That kind of wonder, you can’t keep fighting it. Not when the person you’re banged up with is doing it every single day. So that was it, friends ever since. And now, every year, he dresses the company’s winning voice. He gets publicity. We get a free dress. I get to spend a few pockets of time with him. It works.
I stop driving and pull into a lay-by. I’ve got forty minutes left before pick-up. In truth, I needed this time. Needed to think through the shitshow that I’d found myself in. I hadn’t even thought about the CCTV footage. Then again, I had been drunk. I know things are bad with the business. I’ve been borrowing money at zero per cent interest, and now that’s all changing. Interest rates were going sky high. I’d tried to block up some of the leaks. Betsy had brought in funds and so had Fitz. They could both afford to lose money. Only they didn’t want to lose money. Who would? As a point of principle, Betsy never likes to lose, and Fitz, the more control she has over the company, the more control she has over me. Is that what she wants? Difficult to tell with Fitz, but what with the two women watching over my shoulder, it’s getting claustrophobic. Anxiously, I draw my hands through my hair. I’m totally in a fix.
Then there are the guitars. They’re collector’s pieces – were Ed Sheeran’s and Bob Dylan’s. Early versions. And the only thing I care about in the whole building. I thought if I just grabbed them off the wall when this audition process was over, I could buy my way out of the business. Head to some tropical paradise where you only needed a little music to see you through. Write a few songs. Leave the business to Betsy and Fitz. Only now, I can’t do that. Because now we’re missing our winning voice. I reach into my pocket and open my wallet. The SD card with the missing beauty’s voice on is inside. I hold it between my finger and thumb as if I somehow have her captured. This kind of voice, this quality, the originality of the arrangement, the natural, nuanced ease of the pace – this could save the business. Then I could sit on my beach with my guitar and know that everything back home is ticking along just fine. She’s not just my songbird. This broad, whoever she might be, is my golden goose.
CLARA
Within minutes of Marco leaving, Nelly had me sitting on a stool in front of a show-girl bank of bulb-ringed mirrors, my hair held back from my face in a stretchy white Alice band.
‘Nice bone structure,’ he says as he loads a palmful of white face cream into his hand.
